


Acrimony

by brokenbutstillstanding



Category: B: The Beginning
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, PTSD, b the beginning, gilbert is an asshole
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 01:49:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13893675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenbutstillstanding/pseuds/brokenbutstillstanding
Summary: Months after what happened with Gilbert, Lily and Keith have a case together. But Keith soon discovers that not everything with Lily is alright, and it may just jeopardize their entire lives.





	Acrimony

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't find any fanfics for B the Beginning so I thought I'd start adding to the pile!

Keith honestly had no idea how he’d been roped into this. Despite his appearance, Boris could be a rather tricky man when he wanted to be. He had been trying to use every excuse he could to shove himself and Lily together, much to his annoyance. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Lily, she just tended to aggravate the hell out of him on a daily basis. They were the perfect example of yin and yang, just about every part of himself was firmly contrasted by her. 

Boris and Lily were supposed to be starting a new case today, some murderer in the slums who had been getting a little trigger happy, but the old man had shoved the case off onto Keith claiming he would be better suited.

Better suited his ass. 

He checked the face of his watch for the fourth time that hour. Lily was late. He wasn’t a model employee himself, but that woman had the worst track record when it came to punctuality, and it had been getting worse as of late if that was even possible.

Speaking of the woman in question, a mop of frazzled black hair all but toppled through the door, coffee and paperwork spilling around her as she regained her footing.

“Sorry! Sorry I’m late!” She rapidly apologized, making her way to her desk and trying not to trip on her shoelaces at the same time.

“Late again, Lily.” Eric scolded halfheartedly, trying to hide the fond smile creeping on his face.

She did have a rather endearingly clumsy quality about her he supposed, but her annoying persistence made up for it tenfold. 

“Ah! Lily! I thought Keith might be able to help you out with the Hillside Killer case you’ve been working on today!” Boris said with a too bright smile.

“Oh…alright!” She responded, her surprise only momentary before she made her way over to where the shaggy man had been lounging. 

The office slowly resumed its normal quiet atmosphere as she plopped down in the chair next to him, organizing her papers and smoothing out the creases. Keith stared at her for a long moment before speaking.

“You look like shit.” He greeted, causing the woman to let out an enraged cry as she turned to face him head on.

He hadn’t been lying, she really did look awful. She had bags under her eyes worse than his, the dark circles sinking into her face. Her usually rosy cheeks were pale and her eyes were bloodshot. Now that he thought about it, she had been showing up to work more and more often looking like the walking dead.

“How dare you! I just…haven't been feeling well lately! Shame on you, insulting a sick woman!” She ranted, he wished she would turn her volume down just a little, his ears were starting to ring.

“Yeah? And were you sick last week too? And the week before that?” He countered, he couldn’t help but egg her on just a little. 

Beyond that he really was curious, she may be annoying but Keith though of her as a friend, and she certainly had never shown up to work looking quite this bad before. Her mouth opened and closed a few times in search of something to say before she found her voice.

“I-it happens to be chronic!” She defended, crossing her arms. Keith just raised an eyebrow in an expression that told her he didn’t buy it.

Nevertheless he decided to let it go, if she didn’t want to tell him then she didn’t want to tell him. He didn’t miss the tension leaving her shoulders and the soft sigh of relief as he turned to face the desk.

“So why don’t you brief me on this case?” He asked as he started to shift through the papers.

“Right! So the Hillside Killer is named because they always commit their murders on Hillside Street downtown. We’ve sent cops out to patrol the area 24/7 but somehow more bodies keep finding their way in dumpsters and down alleyways down that road. We can’t find an explanation for it.” She rubbed at one eye and took a sip of her coffee before spreading out a few pictures with crime scene markers on them.

“The first victim was a 34 year old female with black hair, the second victim was a 22 year old male with blonde hair, and the third victim was a 27 year old female with brown hair. All of the victim’s eyes had been removed from their bodies so we don’t have any information on that-“

“Their eyes?” Keith interrupted, deep in thought already.

“Yes. Like they just got plucked out of their skull. The fourth victim was found this morning, she was ID’d as a 24 year old female with blonde hair. We need to head over to the crime scene and see what we can figure out.” Lily finished.

“What is the cause of death?” Keith asked, doodling on the notepad he was supposed to be taking notes on.

“Thats another strange thing…all four victims seem to have been drained of all their blood. There are no visible wounds besides the missing eyes.” She said, pale cheeks going even a little paler if it was possible.

Keith contemplated. There had to be something with the eyes. Most serial killers liked to keep some sort of memento or souvenir from their victims, it was some sort of sadistic trophy to satisfy their psychopathic tendencies. It must be the eyes for this killer, the only question was why? And where did all of their blood go if it wasn’t in their body?

“Is there a correlation between the victim’s blood types?” He pressed, brainstorming any possible answer to the puzzle.

“We don’t know, we are still working on a positive ID for the victims, until then we have no way of knowing what blood type they had. You think the blood type had anything to do with it?” Lily asked.

“It could be possible…I’m just trying to find the correlation between the eyes and the blood. There must be a reason.” Keith mused to himself. 

“Thats what I thought too. Lets go check out the crime scene, we might be able to find more answers there.” She suggested, scooting her chair back and picking up her coffee cup with a large yawn.

He followed behind her, nose wrinkling at the smell of her coffee. It was some super sweet blend he couldn’t stand, he teeth ached just thinking about it. He was willing to bet she had poured a good amount of sugar in there that morning too. He’d thrown out her coffee cups that were laying out in the office before, there was so much sugar that it couldn’t all dissolve and instead stuck to the bottom and the sides of the styrofoam. 

The car ride to the crime scene was blessedly quiet other than the occasional yawn or head shake from the woman beside him in an attempt to keep herself awake. The dark circles under her eyes really did look bad. Worse than they did yesterday in fact, and that was saying something. Keith had some pretty impressive bags under his eyes himself, but Lily was quickly becoming the new office champion.

She threw her cup away as they reached the roped off area, cops swarmed the corners looking for anything they could use as evidence. In the middle of the alley was a body bag, it was still zipped open and what he saw even made his stomach turn a bit.

The woman was pale white, verging on blue due to the lack of blood in her body, he could stare straight into her skull and see her brain from the two dark holes bored into where her eyes should have been. 

“We were here all night long. We patrolled, we looked everywhere, we didn’t hear a single thing all night long. All of a sudden she was just…here.” 

Keith turned around to find Lily speaking with a police officer, he began to meander his way over to her and leave the body to the coroner when something caught his eye.

When the hell had Lily gotten another cup of coffee? He swore he saw her throw the old one away…

He shook his head in defeat as he closed the distance between them, there would be time to ask about that later. 

“Thank you for your help.” She smiled at the officer.

The two detectives searched every nook and cranny of the alleyway, but even Keith had to admit that he was stumped. Where had the body come from? It seemed to have just appeared out of thin air. He was frustrated. He wasn’t used to not knowing the answer, and from the looks of it neither was Lily. She gnawed on her lip, brows furrowed and the best way to describe the look on her face would be agitated. 

“Lets head back to the office. There isn’t anything else we can do here, we can at least see if they have any news on the victim’s identities.” He suggested, turning to walk down the street without seeing if she would follow.

He heard the footsteps behind him anyways, and the pair buckled into their seats. However, when Lily tried to put the key into the ignition he noticed she couldn’t quite keep it steady. She tried a few times, hand shaking badly, before getting right and turning on the car.

Keith frowned as she took another sip of coffee.

“I think you’ve had enough coffee for the day. I’ve never seen you this jittery” he said with his arms folded across his chest.

“I’m fine! I don’t know what you are talking about!” She argued, pressing harder on the gas pedal. 

“Where did you even get that second cup from anyways?” He pushed. She just clenched her hands harder around the wheel.

“Since when did you care so much?” She bit back.

That was new.

He was used to all sorts of things from Lily. Anger, excitement, happiness, sadness, even fear, but this was the first time he had ever heard this sort of defensive animosity come from her. He had to admit it intrigued him.

By the time the pair got back to the office they were silent once more. He pushed the door open and held it for her as she walked by, he frowned as he noticed her sway just a little. Before he could do much more than close the door behind them he heard a THUD as her coffee hit the floor and she was toppling backwards towards the ground. Keith’s reflexes kicked into action and he lunged forward just in time to keep her from hitting her head, he turned her over quickly with a spike of concern shooting through his body.

“Lily?” He asked urgently, ignoring the cries of everyone else around them.

He heard chairs scooting back and hurried footsteps as Boris, Eric, and Bran swarmed into his vision all calling frantically for her.

He placed a finger on her pulse, checked her breathing, and pulled back her eyelid, sighing in relief when he saw she was perfectly fine.

“She's okay. Just exhausted.” He announced to the room.

“Oh thank God. I knew she was overdoing it…” Boris muttered, more to himself than anything else.

“Keith, will you take her home? You can use one of the vans.” Eric asked, brow furrowed in concern.

“Sure. Give me her address and I’ll be on my way.” He responded. He wasn’t going to fight him on this, the girl clearly needed help.

With one unconscious woman slung over his shoulder and the van keys in his hand he made his way into the parking lot. He had noticed her bloodshot eyes, her pale complexion, her tired state of being, but he had assumed she was overworked or sick. Now he was beginning to think that wasn’t all there was to it.

Buckling a knocked out person into a seatbelt was a lot harder than it sounded, after ten minutes of trying not to let her slump to one side of the other he successfully completed his task and then took a look at the paper Boris had given him with Lily’s address on it. She didn’t live too far away, it only took fifteen minutes for them to arrive. Getting her up the stairs to her apartment, however, was another story completely. Especially with the problems his leg had been giving him lately.

With every step he thought of a new and more colorful curse word to call the woman in his arms as he slowly made his way up the stairs, but when he finally made it to the third floor he groaned as a thought hit him.

Where the hell was her key? He set the woman down on the ground and slowly and carefully tried to go through her pockets. Why did she have to wear pants this damn tight? He tried to ignore the blush he could feel spreading to his ears as he tried to avoid any scandalous places. Coming up empty, he was about to give Boris a call when a thought hit him.

Peeling up the dirty front door mat yielded the best thing he had seen all day. A spare key.

He lugged her back into his arms and finally pushed into her apartment.

He honestly didn’t know what he was expecting. The mess he was greeted with was something else entirely though. The place stunk of that same sweet coffee blend and he could see beans and empty containers laying all over the kitchen, the living room looked as though a tornado had blown through and her bedroom…her sheets were on one side of the room while her pillows were on the other, her lamp was on the floor and if he didn’t know any better he would have thought a fight had broken out.

Shaking his head, he laid the woman down on the bed. He briefly considered changing her into something more comfortable to sleep in, but nixed the idea almost as soon as he had it with a flush to his face. She would most likely kill him if he did that. Although, he supposed he had already seen all she had to offer. A frown pulled at his face, he didn’t like thinking about finding her naked, laying bleeding in a pile of corpses. That was different. 

He was about to turn to leave when he was startled with a loud scream, causing him to whirl around at the ready.

The only threat in the room was Lily, she was thrashing on the bed in such a manner that it became apparent to Keith why her room was in such disarray. 

“No! Leave me alone, no!” She cried, the panic in her voice was palpable. 

“Lily!” he cried, cautiously stepping towards the flailing woman.

“No! No, stop it! Keith!” her shrieks got louder, but when he heard his name he froze in his tracks, a feeling of ice seeping through his bones.

“Lily! Wake up! It’s a dream!” He called, snapping out of it and reaching out to shake the woman with a newfound vigor.

Her eyes snapped open, she jackknifed up and raised one arm to hit him which he easily blocked. 

“Lily, Lily it’s me! It’s Keith!” He called loudly, hoping it would snap her out of whatever nightmare she was having.

After what seemed like an eternity she calmed down, her eyes becoming more focused as the locked on him.

“…Keith…?” She asked hoarsely. 

He released her wrist with a sigh, gingerly sitting on the bed at her feet. It all made sense to him now, it made so much sense he could have kicked himself for not realizing it sooner. 

“You haven’t been sleeping, have you?” He asked, although he already knew the answer. 

Her silence told him everything he needed to know.

“You haven’t been sleeping because you’ve been having nightmares…” He finished. 

She nodded hesitantly, almost like she was afraid to speak.

“What…are your nightmares about…me?” He asked, her voice shrieking his name echoing in his head. Her eyes widened almost comically. 

“No! Well, I mean, you’re in them…but no! It’s about…” She stuttered.

He looked her in the eyes, understanding dawning on him.

“About Gilbert?” He asked softly. She looked a little stunned at first but then slowly nodded.

“How long has this been going on?” He demanded quietly, trying hard to catch her gaze again.

“Ever since that night…ever since I woke up in the hospital…” She admitted, wrapping her arms around her knees. 

Keith sighed. He’d had his fair share of nightmares too, although his often involved staring down the barrel of his gun and snuffling the life out of someone he considered a friend. The same friend who was haunting her nightmares.

The two sat in silence for a long time before finally Keith stood, he didn’t miss the way Lily’s eyes turned downcast at his perceived exit. But he didn’t head for the door, all he did was grab her bedsheets and a chair, then throw the sheet over her and sit down near her face.

“Sleep. You can’t avoid it forever. I’ll wake you up if you start to have nightmares.” He said seriously, picking up the random book from her bedside table and flipping to the first page.

“Keith…” her voice sounded choked and when he looked at her he could see the tears swimming in her eyes. 

“…thank you.” She finished with a halfhearted smile and laid down, turning away from him although he could see the subtle shake of her shoulders as the tried to lull herself back to sleep.

It wasn’t until nearly an hour later, when he was certain she was too deep asleep to hear him, that he responded.

“You’re welcome, Lily.”


End file.
